but if i see one more cybertruck i swear to god i'm gonna floor it
LINUS SELLIER. 25. CIS MAN. HE/HIM is here! They’ve lived in Cascade for 10 MONTHS and currently reside in TULE BAY (FOGGY BOTTOM). VP is a CAMP RANGER at FALSE CASCADE and frequently hears that they look a lot like ANTHONY TURPEL. Funny, huh? If ever caught by Letterboxd, they’d say THE BABADOOK is in their Top 4 and the theme song to their life’s soundtrack would be HEADED NORTH by NOAH KAHAN. / written by axel, 29, they/them, est
full name ⸺ linus ezra sellier nickname(s) ⸺ link, lee, vp (exclusively by his family) preferred name ⸺ linus or link date of birth / age ⸺ feb 28, 2001 zodiac sign ⸺ pisces gender / pronouns ⸺ cis man / he/him orientation ⸺ pansexual
faceclaim ⸺ anthony turpel physical description ⸺ average height with shaggy brown hair that rarely looks combed. most average looking guy imaginable — you could put him in a lineup with every white man in the general area of the monongahela forest and not be able to pick him out. wears a lot of obvious hand me downs (by choice) from 10+ years ago, mostly consisting of cargo pants and flannel shirts layered over tshirts. lots of well-worn carhartt. often wears the same thing several days in a row. sneakers always falling apart. occupation(s) ⸺ camp ranger at false cascade, formerly worked at his uncle’s mothman motel education ⸺ high school, has a couple of college credits (community college dropout) hometown ⸺ morgantown, west virginia / point plesant, west virginia
mother / relationship ⸺ daphne sellier / talk regularly, more of a friendship than a parent/child relationship father / relationship ⸺ callum messer / no contact, have never met siblings ⸺ none children ⸺ none pets ⸺ a dog made up of so many breeds that everyone who meets him has a different guess what breed he is named sheriff other / relationship ⸺ duke “duck” sellier / maternal uncle and father figure; silas sellier / older maternal cousin, room mate, travel companion, planned business partner, practically brother; + another older maternal cousin / also practically a brother
aesthetics ⸺ paths worn into the forest floor, tumbled rocks in a gift shop bin, falling asleep to youtube creepypasta readings, rusted old pickup trucks, ignored NO TREASPASSING signs, the annual point pleasant mothman festival, your appalachian grandmother’s superstitions about the woods, whistling in them after dark anyway character inspirations ⸺ wirt (over the garden wall), gravity falls (the entire show), craig williams (craig of the creek), shane madej (og buzzfeed unsolved), various noah kahan songs links ⸺ pinterest / musings / spotify
01. linus sellier came into the world on a sub-zero february night just a few minutes shy of a march morning. his mother, daphne, surrounded only by hospital staff. his father long gone by now, they'd broken up a couple of months earlier, and they hadn't known each other very long anyway. her only vistors over the hospital stay being her brother, duke, and his wife, who'd came to drive them home with hand me down baby supplies and a couple of cousins eager to meet the baby. her only real help, they spent a lot of time visiting over the next year when daphne didn't know what to do with a colicky linus and to help her with paperwork for whatever government assistance the little family could possibly get.
02. though linus getting into a head start program that freed her up for a few hours to get a better job helped, the following years didn't get much easier. finding a job willing to accommodate a young single mother was a challenge. linus, for his part, was relatively oblivious. the kids he was usually surrounded by were in similar boats for the most part — lower income, struggling families in an economy headed to a brick wall like wile e coyote. the dollar general kept him fed, he had a section 8 roof over his head, and the goodwill and church rummage sales kept him in decent enough clothes. his mom did her best to shield him from how much she was struggling.
03. brief death mention tw. which is what made the decisions made a few years later blindside him all the more. 2008 hit hard, and it quickly became apparent that keeping the two of them afloat was only going to get harder. he was 8. linus remembers that week clearly. early summer, a few days into his summer vacation, they made the two hour road trip down to point pleasant visit uncle duck and his cousins. a rarity, with his mother's work schedule, that usually only allowed for brief holiday visits. the last visit not for a holiday was for his auntie, duck's beloved wife's, funeral a year or two earlier. in the time since then, duck moved himself and the boys out into a new place on the edge of the woods. built up a tourist trap of a bed and breakfast themed after the mothman of local legend. midlife crisis or strange coping mechanism? both? who's to say. daphne and linus got the best room in the motel whenever they spent time with them, and there was nothing linus loved more than the freedom of the woods with his cousins.
04. he remembers looking back at his mom and her brother the old wrap around porch on his way into the forest, when they thought none of the boys would be looking. his mom looking sad, uncle duck looking sympathetic, his big cousins calling for him to hurry up and reluctantly pulling him away and further into the woods. he actually forgot about the scene on the porch for a while. until later, after a bath and saying their goodnights, when his mom gently broached the subject. how would you feel about living here? with duck and the boys? excitement quickly turned to tears when she explained that she wouldn't be staying with them. at least right now. she didn't know for how long yet. she'd be trying to go back to school. trying to get a better, more stable job so she could provide for the both of them. you deserve better than what i can do for you right now. linus wasn't sure about that.
05. be good, try to help out. the words his mother had told him during their tearful goodbye echoed in his head for the rest of the summer. he could do that. by the time duck was taking him along to get enrolled in his new school in early august, linus had warmed up to the arrangement. it was less lonely, being surrounded by family all day. he only get a few hours a day with his mom back home, and late dinners when she got home from work had just been replaced with nightly phone calls. she sounded progressively more relaxed as the weeks went by. happy that he was well taken care of and happy. she would go on to come to visit every chance she could, visibly more at ease than she'd ever been. it was a complicated feeling, though he never really thought it was his fault she'd been so stressed out before. he missed her, but the time he got to spend with her now was higher quality.
06. when he was 12, linus made the decision to stay. permanently. daphne was in a more stable position back at home, he'd gone to visit her as much as she had come to visit him and he could see for himself, but he'd grown fond of the arrangement. while his mom was building a life in morgantown, he'd been building one of his own in point pleasant. his cousins like brothers now, everyone settled into a routine — starting all over again for a second time sounded daunting. for everybody, it turned out, because discussing it with his mom revealed that she had the same apprehension. largely worrying about her son, but herself too, and their relationship. of course, duck had been involving her in everything to do with his care, but she felt like less of a parental figure anymore. she was more of a respected older sister… who he just happened to call mom.
07. his teen years were what you would expect from a kid in small town appalachia. mischief enabled by older cousins, a warning or five from the sheriff to watch his behavior, uncle duck pretending to be mad about it but letting it slide in exchange for bathroom cleaning duty. he and his cousins started taking on more responsibility around the motel. linus rolling his eyes at the tourists that came at a steady trickle but flooded town every late september. he listened patiently to their stories, directed them to the old silver bridge and the old war bunkers, sold them dvd copies of the mothman prophecies, even appeared in a few of their two and three figure views youtube videos as a local tour guide. he'd seen some things out in those woods, but all of it very human and very natural. he did think he'd seen the mothman. once. when he was maybe 10. but as soon as he turned his flashlight on it, it just turned out to be a rather large owl guarding it's nest. but of course, that was never the story the tourists heard. let them have their fun. especially if it earns him a couple bucks tip.
08. say what you will about duck sellier, but he's a good business man. and he passed that on to his boys — linus included. so it's no big surprise a couple of them decided to set off and try to replicate the business model elsewhere. that's how linus and one of his older cousins ended up in an old rv bought off one of the neighbors and setting out west. changing destinations once or twice, but ultimately settling on cascade, california. small and forested enough to feel like home, but with whole new creature legends to cash in on. he finds the sasquatch thing even more laughable than mothman, personally. the stories are even less consistent and coherent, the devotees missing a good few screws more. what's next, aliens abducting a cow from a field with a big green floodlight? but hey, he's seen the kind of money these people are willing to spend. and he's honestly pretty sure the rv wouldn't make it all the way back to west virginia even if he did want to abandon ship.
the nickname vp evolved from the childhood family nickname van pelt, which itself evolved from linus van pelt, after the peanuts character. there’s a running joke that he’s actually named after him, but his mom has never actually denied it. only family uses it, though he's sure other people have heard it used. he wouldn't take kindly to anyone else using it.
got himself the camp ranger job correctly figuring that it would take a while to get anything up and running, let alone turning any kind of profit. he likes it. relatively quiet, gets to spend a lot of time outside, can yell at people for parking their campers like assholes and for not tying their food up out of reach of the bears.
upon arriving in cascade, he and his cousin lived in the rv they came in in the outskirts for months after rolling into town. but recently, they moved into a trailer because linus finally got so fed up with having to break camp, drive the rv to work, and get it all hooked up to the waterline just to take a damn shower that he threatened to take the rv and the dog and drive back to west virginia by himself.
along with the job, he bought a rusty old pickup truck off facebook marketplace for $800 and assurance that it “runs great”. it does not. but it runs enough of the time to get by. he's not about to buy one built after 1999, trucks made after that are made for show and not function, the beds are puny and they're too high up.
he doesn't have a ton of faith in the whole business plan. yeah, they're serviceable enough businessmen, but starting one? he's ready to drag them home if shit goes too far sideways.
likes fishing. he doesn't even particularly like to eat fish — he'll do it, because catch and release is kind of cruel — he just likes the activity and the adrenaline rush and bragging rights of catching a big fish. he does, in fact, have a man holding a big fish profile picture on instagram and one on his hinge profile.
always has a handful of those tumbled museum gift shop rocks in his pockets. gives them to children and people he particularly likes.
he got the dog from one of those adopt-a-thon events back in west virginia. picked him out because he was the weirdest looking dog there and he'd overheard a few people talking about how weird he looks. sheriff is surprisingly well trained for a dog who looks like he was found in a dumpster. he gets to come along on walks in the woods off leash and swim in whatever rivers and creeks linus finds. he's actually usually off leash, but linus always carries one in case they need it (rare) or someone asks to leash him.
very good at geoguessr. he's no rainbolt or anything, but you can show him a picture and he'll be able to tell you the general area it was taken in based on the kinds of trees and the style of bollards and power lines and stuff like that.
also good at rubiks cubes and those little slide puzzles like you get from the dentist treasure chest? he spent a lot of time doing little busy activities like that in the backseat of the car during long drives between morgantown and point pleasant as a kid.
the kind of guy that carries a pocket knife everywhere. he got it way back from his arrow of light in boy scouts. took surprisingly good care of it even as a kid, so it's in great shape. it helps that duck bought an old one off someone, so it was well made to begin with. he has used to it slash a few tires.
also usually carries about what he calls a satchel, what anyone who wants to annoy him would call a purse. it's covered in vintage pins and patches.
can yap about old appalachian legends and history for hours if you let him. nothing he loves more.
connections!
so generally i prefer to see where dash interactions take me and don't love extensively plotting ahead of time, but i know other people do like to do that so! a handful of ideas:
hiking / fishing buddies! i like the idea of two people finding each other out in the woods and just kind of becoming friends over that that. maybe they barely speak to each other but just show up at the same spot at the same time every week.
false cascade regulars! regular campers, other people working around there, whatever. people who have seen linus get frustrated with and yell at people who don't properly put out their campfires (or people who have on the receiving end of a lecture about forest fires? multiple times perhaps?)
bigfoot believers! he will listen to and entertain you about it, but he will make fun of you for it (affectionately) when you aren't around.
campy horror movie fans! someone watch stupid horror movies with him. the stupider the better. please do not invite him to watch an actual good movie, he will be disappointed. or do, idk, your life.
whoever he bought his truck from! he is looking for an opportunity to put sugar in their gas tank for selling him a shitty truck, but he's attached to it so he's not looking to get them to take it back or anything.
locals who have taken a liking to him! i don't know why anyone would try to befriend the weird new guy with a weird accent and a weird cousin and an even weirder dog who just showed up one day and proceeded to camp on the edge of town for months straight, but hey, that's your prerogative!
